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Jm_aus writes "eBay's plan to force all users to use PayPal only has been rejected by Australia's competition regulator, the ACCC. This followed 650 submissions from eBay users as well as from Australian banks, other payment services, the Australian Reserve Bank, and (anonymously) Google, which aired a lot of dirty laundry about PayPal's unresponsiveness and failure to sign up to the local banking code of conduct. Apparently the public benefits from eBay's 'Bad Buyer Experience' elimination program are likely to be 'minimal.' There is a period for appeals."

As a buyer, I really want to use my credit card directly. PayPal, last time I used it, only covered a $200 return or so. I went straight through to my credit card company (which is linked to my PayPal account) and did a chargeback through them. PayPal sent me a nastigram saying if you keep that up, we'll cut you off.

Unfortunately in the UK banks are no longer required to help you out or issue chargebacks in cases involving PayPal. The reason is that the banking code only requires them to do anything when you have a dispute with the person you had a transaction with, which in this case is PayPal. You send the money to PayPal, and then in a separate transaction they send it to the seller. So, if you problem is with the seller, they don't have to help.

I did my homework, and that's why they have my credit card on the back end (which, thankfully, can tell them to get stuffed). You're right about linking to any account that keeps cash on hand in it. PayPal also has a long history of locking cash in its customer accounts. Really, they're just terrible to everybody involved. I don't believe I've bought anything with my account since that time.

From a seller's point of view: The EBay style of charging the seller commission, then charging the seller a percentage of PayPal too kinda gets me. Sure, they're treating them like the separate company they used to be, but come on. I suppose you get what you get for having something less than a true credit card merchant account (which costs).

As an aside rant, I'm sad that nobody does a cash discount anymore. I'd happily pay you on a 2% reduction to save you the 3% or whatever my CC company charges. Well, really to save myself 2%, but you'd profit as a vendor!

Lots of places still do minimum limits, though. "Your transaction must be at least $3.00 to use a credit card here."

That's against the terms of the merchant agreement to require a lower limit.

What you might be thinking of is the similar "Minimum $3 charge if using credit card". Your quote implies that if you buy a $1 item, you can't pay by credit card. My quote says if you want to buy a $1 item, you will be charged $3 for it instead if you use a credit card.

That's against the terms of the merchant agreement to require a lower limit.

I know. But up here at least, it still happens.

What you might be thinking of is the similar "Minimum $3 charge if using credit card". Your quote implies that if you buy a $1 item, you can't pay by credit card. My quote says if you want to buy a $1 item, you will be charged $3 for it instead if you use a credit card.

That would also be against the rules of the CC companies. And that's not what I'm talking about. I'm quite literally talking about a hand-lettered sign on the register saying "Your transaction must be at least $3.00 to use a credit card here, sorry for the inconvenience."

The places I've seen that do this have specific wording that calls it a "convenience" discount that applies to cash or debit cards only.

I'm not sure how that changes things but it never is called a cash discount, perhaps that's just how the agreements (or state laws perhaps, in this case, since I see it in south carolina but not north carolina) are written.

When I worked for a large bank , the rule was that they were not allowed to specify different pricing for CC vs cash. A discount for using a particular method was allowed under the regulations.
It looks like that's still the rule. Page 10 of the Visa Merchant Card Acceptance Guide [visa.com]

Always treat Visa transactions like any other transaction; that is, you may not
impose any surcharge on a Visa transaction. You may, however, offer a discount
for cash transactions, provided that the offer is clearly disclosed to customers
and the cash price is presented as a discount from the standard price charged for
all other forms of payment.

And Page 9:

Always honor valid Visa cards in your acceptance category, regardless of the
dollar amount of the purchase. Imposing minimum or maximum purchase
amounts in order to accept a Visa card transaction is a violation of the Visa rules.

Merchants are not allowed to set minimum or maximum amounts for transactions on Visa. I'm too lazy to find it, but I know Mastercard has a similar rule.

In response to the Anonymous Coward, they are allowed to give cash discounts, but it has to be clearly stated to the customer before hand. A couple of the local computer stores here do this, but they have labels all over the store saying "All prices are 2% cash or debit discounted"

Report them to your bank/card issuer! Nobody will stop doing it if we let them get away with it.I was once told I couldn't use my credit card for a small transaction (there was no posted minimum either). I wasn't sure at the time about these things so I didn't put up a fuss and paid cash. I checked into it, once I learned that they were violating the merchant rules I filed a complaint with my bank (the card issuer).

I received a reply a few days later that Visa was looking into it. Strangely enough, I have

As I've said in other posts: They knew the rules of the game before signing with a CC clearinghouse.

If they feel they can't profit on taking a CC transaction below a certain amount, they should either: Find a processing provider with better rates, not take CCs at all, or raise their prices such that larger purchases offset some of the cost.

Their profit margins aren't my concern, and it's silly to be expected to carry cash to make small purchases.

And you do not own a business obviously. THERE ARE NO BETTER TERMS. Everybody has that clause. You want the business owner to take it up the ass so you dont have to carry around a few dollars? You want the business owner to lose money on the transactions that are less than $3 or whatever arbitrary amount they set?
Get in touch with reality, I am in business to make money, and if I am not going to make money doing business with you, YOU can go do business somewhere else.
The minimums in the CC acceptan

Considering that #1 isn't possible, you would actually prefer they do #2 or #3? Neither of those benefit consumers. #2 means you still have to carry cash, but now for ANY size transaction. #3, well, nobody likes higher prices. And either one would put the store at a serious disadvantage that would almost certainly put them out of business. This isn't Wal-Mart we're talking about - the big corporations can afford to lose out on the pack of gum you put on your charge card. These are the few mom & pop stor

What a joke. You're honestly attempting to justify this with all that?

The merchant was not entitled to charge you extra for the ability to pay by credit card - this is between the merchant and the merchant provider. YOU accepted the charge, knowing that it could lead to you being able to dispute the transaction with the card provider, which you did. Your liability was from the merchant in the tune of $50, not $1,050.

You do realize that nothing in the merchant agreement that disallowed them from doing suc

By your reasoning they should also charge the same cost per item in the store, since the stocking cost is the cost of doing business. People are buying ITEMS, so any ITEM should be X$ no matter what payment method or item.

Should stores lose money selling beer since per ounce there are more taxes on it than on milk, and that's also "just the cost of doing business" (or charge the same for milk and beer?)

Offering a Cash discount (Discount for Cash) is not against ANY CC company or processor agreement.
What is NOT allowed is charging a fee for a CC transaction, and / or a minimum / maximum limit of the transaction.
Any retailer has the right to offer a discount for cash. What they can't do is list their prices in any advertisement, publication, etc without stipulating that the price shown is for cash. If it's not on the advert, then they can't charge more for a CC transaction.
Furthermore, a lot of ret

This was outlawed here in Australia a few years ago, so merchants are now free to charge a fee for credit card purchases (which some would call offering a discount for cash).The main reason for doing this was to make the costs of buying by credit card transparent. Under the old system, credit card providers charged a fee to the merchant, but the fee was hidden from the consumer. The merchants had to absorb this cost by raising prices slightly across the board. That meant that the banks were effectively appl

Since the article is about Australia it's worth pointing out that in the last few years those terms and conditions were legislated obsolete.

Vendors can (and often do) pass on the direct amount charged. This happens always at small markets and fairs (specifically the computer markets) but JB-HIFI (think the best buy of aus) charges an extra 1-2% for amex.

Nobody does a cash discount anymore because it's against eBay policy. eBay is all about making the seller unable to get around eBay's exorbitant fees in any way possible. That is their entire basis for forcing PayPal.

To give an example of their total fee structure: after selling a small item for $30, you're only going to see around $24.50 for it after fees, and then you still have to pay to ship it.

The post mentioned total fee structure, not just the PayPal fees. On your $38 auction you would be paying at least another $2.74 in eBay fees, and that's just going on the bare minimum amounts.

There's also the fact that there are services equivalent to PayPal that charge 1.5%+$0.30, so its service simply can't compete on value. That's precisely why eBay are now choosing to force sellers to offer it - in order to prevent them from using more economical options.

Really I don't object to them charging a percentage on transactions - it's still cheaper than a full merchant account. What I very much do object to is them charging twice what Google Checkout does for an equivalent transaction. What I object to even more is being forced as a seller to use PayPal - incidentally does anyone know who in the UK I should make a complaint about this to? It reeks of anticompetitive behaviour, as the Australians have realised.

eBay actually has Google Checkout listed as 'Not permitted' on their Accepted Payments [ebay.co.uk] page, and anyone who has ever tried to email eBay's support team to question this will know how hard it is to get an answer (they normally just spout irrelevant canned responses until you give up) but I did finally get an email from eBay explaining that I am allowed to use it but that I must offer it alongside PayPal and outside of the eBay checkout process.

I won't even go into PayPal's dubious dispute processes and lack of safeguards - they are well documented elsewhere, but again the argument of "don't use them" is rendered moot by eBay's policies.

I think it's because PayPal is fairly undefined. It does seem like it's a bank and so people unthinkingly treat it as if it is one, but of course it has no actual bank foundation. And, of course, they have no imperative to become a bank, because then they'd have to follow the rules.

I'm just hoping that all countries everywhere enact similar rulings. Paypal gets on my damn nerves.

At best, they would argue they are a payment processor. A Bank does many other types of cash and lending operations.

FYI: You can start your own payment processing service like any business. Where you are going to get screwed, is when you need to connect to banks for electronic funds transfers. ACH rates are low, but getting into the network is not cheap or easy.

Payment processing is one of the monopolies absolutely no one cares about despite the broad harm to consumers. F*i*r*s*t D,a,t,a and V^i^s^a.

Because PayPal is not a bank. It doesn't offer loans, it doesn't pay interest, it doesn't have a required holdings (no loans = 100% cash on hand), etc, etc.

PayPal is as much of a bank as Chuck E. Cheese is a bank for handing out those game tokens and tickets. It's just a convenient way for you to give money to eBay before you spend it on an actual good (the appeal of which I have yet to understand.)

PayPal doesn't just do payment processing. When you create an account with them (which you need to do in order to pay someone), you put money into this account and then transfer it to the seller's account. You can either do this in one step, or put the money in the account first and leave it there for a while. The seller can then keep the money in their account or transfer it elsewhere. If they leave the money in there (or if you put money in your account and leave it there for a while without sending i

Interesting - I wasn't aware that they do offer interest on deposits, which puts them more towards bank status.

However, storing money in an account is just delayed payment processing. And, they're not FDIC insured. They also don't offer any "bank" services, other than giving the money to another PayPal account.

If you could withdraw money again, I'm guessing it would also be a different situation. And, they still have to comply with Regulation E whether they're a bank or not.

I could be mistaken, but I remember them getting in trouble a while back when it was discovered that they were taking that money sitting in all the accounts and investing it in other places, just like a bank.

They also don't offer any "bank" services, other than giving the money to another PayPal account. If you could withdraw money again, I'm guessing it would also be a different situation.

They also offer a Mastercard debit card that you can use to draw upon your PayPal balance when buying at brick-and-mortar stores and that you can even use at ATMs. Sounds like a "bank service" to me, and a way to withdraw your money without transferring it to a real bank.

The short answer is because the government has the guns. It is important to remember that all powers of any government are backed up by the implicit (or sometimes explicit) threat of overwhelming violence against those who do not submit (rarely physical, although it does sometimes come to that). Those who advocate more taxes, more government, and more regulation would do well to remember that.

One of the principles of the social contract that one becomes a part of in a theoretically democratic society is that one concedes the monopoly on force to the government. The principle advantage of this in a properly functioning democratic society is that while the government has the sole right to use violence (both against its own citizens who do not obey the rule of law and against external threats), its citizens also have the power to exercise their will as to exactly how that power is used.
Your argu

"One of the principles of the social contract that one becomes a part of in a theoretically democratic society..."

When did I sign this contract? When I was born? Am I agreeing to this contract every second (since birth) that I do not quit my job, take all of my property on a plane, and spend my life savings moving to another country? Is that how the contract works in a "democratic society"? If so, where is this explanation written down, and how does it justify the violation of everyone's natural rights a

Am I agreeing to this contract every second (since birth) that I do not quit my job, take all of my property on a plane, and spend my life savings moving to another country?

Basically, yes. The purpose of a social contract (in a grossly over-simplified way) is that every member of the society agrees to it, which greatly lessens the threat of arbitrary violence. If you don't wish to agree to a social contract, you're free to leave the society; if you break the contract, society can remove you by force (e.g. put you in prison).

And you did not answer the two conditional questions I posed immediately after that sentence you quoted.

Also, my purpose here is not to simply say "I don't like it" and leave, but to get discussion going that can eventually lead to candidates being elected who would rather uphold rights than violate them, eventually overturning the laws that do violate our rights.

And you did not answer the two conditional questions I posed immediately after that sentence you quoted.

Assuming the two questions you mean are:

1) Where is it written down? Wikipedia's article [wikipedia.org] has decent information about the general concept, and you can probably find some books from the original philosophers in your local library.

2) How does it justify everyone's natural rights being violated? Well, like I said, the purpose of a social contract is that you give up certain natural rights (e.g. the natural right to kill someone and take their stuff) in exchange for protection from other people exercisin

According to Thomas Hobbes and canonical theory, the essence is as follows: Without society, we would live in a state of nature, where we each have unlimited natural freedoms. The downside of this general autonomy is that it includes the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to harm all who threaten one's own self-preservation; there are no positive rights, only laws of nature and an endless "war of all against all" (Bellum omnium contra omnes, Hobbes 1651). In other words, anyone in the state of nature can do anything he likes; but this also means that anyone can do anything he likes to anyone else.

You're using a different definition of "natural right" than I am. I'm talking about natural rights being the same behavioral freedom that animals in nature have, while you're talking more about what I would usually call human rights (which I completely support, of course). Since there is no single definition, though, neither one of us is really wrong.

The first philosopher who fully made natural rights the source of his moral and political philosophy was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Hobbes argued that it is human nature to love one's self best and seek one's own good (this is a view known as psychological egoism). Since it is unavoidable ("necessity of nature") for human beings to follow their nature, it becomes a right to do so. According to Hobbes, to deny this right is to deny that we have a rig

Being that we are humans, I thought it was clear what I meant. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. These are rights that we all have as rational beings, and it is immoral for one person to use their liberty to violate the rights of another.

You're confusing animal rights with human rights. It is your natural right to do whatever you please so long as you don't violate the rights of others. Do what you want with yourself and your property, and do whatever you want with others and their property - as long as you get their permission first.

The real real question to ask is how PayPal can get away with forcing any person or company (bank or otherwise) to do with their property other than they wish.

I always wonder how come the government's motives always seem to be questioned when corporations never are, despite infringing on people's rights and liberties just as much. You can't even say corporations don't have their own army - many of them do. Some of them are the army.

I can't stand paypal. I've had an account since the earlier days before there really were options, though I so rarely use it because without PAYING for an account, I can only transfer money through a direct bank transfer. On EVERY ONE of my ebay listings I have to add a footnote alerting people that they can't pay with a credit card through paypal because paypal won't allow me to do that...

And the only way to be able to do that is to sign up for an account where they take a percentage of all of my transactions.

How does that commercial go? "It's my money and I want it now!"
But seriously, I'm tired of paypal, I just wish it would go the way of the dinosaurs because it's such a frustrating site to use to transfer funds.

Yeah but the thing is, with an account where I can't accept these transactions, people are still ABLE to attempt them.

It's very frustrating to cancel a transaction, send an email to the person telling them I can't accept it and to send me the money through their checking account instead. It's a process that shouldn't have to happen. If I don't have the business premier account or whatever it's called, then people shouldn't be able to initiate a credit card transaction.

Yeah, I've been using Craigslist more and more for things I want, and I find everything goes a bit more smoothly when there's no hidden fees and surcharges for every move you make.
Ugh don't even get me started on fees....$40 to list a car on ebaymotors? BS

I use Paypal to receive money with (it is hella convenient for some folks I do work for on the side to pay me that way).

OTOH, the down side is that they extract fees that would make a bank or credit union blush for every transaction. Also, someone governmental needs to take a serious look at forcing them to be regulated and to follow the same rules as a real bank.

In PayPals opinion I still live with polar bears, barbarians and blood feud. In post Soviet Russia, paypal uses one way money transfers only. Once you transferred money to paypal account, you can only spend it, no transferring back:D
I for once welcome our money grabbing overlords:-D

I have had a PayPal account since they had that send money with no fees promotion that my now ex-wife and her friend used to rack up a couple of thousand frequent flyer miles on each others WorldPerks cards.
I generally trust PayPal and I like the money market feature on my account, but it is not the only way to pay and it should not be set up that way. The world needs competition and it is going to hurt a lot of people who may just want to buy or sell one thing and don't want to set up an account for that one hassle to go through.
For some things PayPal is perfect, but not for everything. On websites where you have an actually established revenue stream and are not just selling one or two things a day I think it looks bad if you are running PayPal only. I recently backed out of a deal to buy a stack of sub woofers from a company because I didn't want to deal with the creation of a PayPal account on the business card for one transaction.
They lost out on a big sale, just because they were stuck with PayPal and PayPal only and I know that I am not the only one who responds to things this way.

Amazon has been great for buying and selling college books on. I have basically just been paying for shipping. When I need to add money Amazon can charge my Debit card, otherwise the money from selling books goes to buying the next set. Other items can also be added. There is currently two Commodore 64 systems for sale for $235. Need a PalmOne m100 Handheld 9 Used & new from $11.89.

I was part of the massive lawsuit against Paypal back when there were plenty of scammers. One such tried to screw me and even though I provide more than enough evidence to PROVE without a shadow of a doubt this guy was scamming the system, committing mail fraud, AND on top of that was using stolen credit cards, AND i gave him his confirmed address...

They still sided with him. However, I knew this was a possibility and I moved the money out of paypal, and blocked them from charging me back through my bank who happily sided with me.

About 6 months later I joined the lawsuit, and provided all of the evidence to them for exhibits. If you didn't know we won... and won big. Not happy with the default settlement offering I filed for the full settlement and received my check a few months later. I framed it... and I will NEVER do business with Paypal again.

I don't care if Ebay bought them. They do not follow banking guidelines, they consistently have proven themselves untrustworthy and generally don't abide by the law OR their own policies.

If Ebay goes to Paypal only, I think they'll soon realize the size of the mistake they will make when other auction sites blow past them at 90mph!

they'll soon realize the size of the mistake they will make when other auction sites blow past them

What other auction sites are there? I know of a few, but they all suck. They will have a hard time beating eBay who has television adverts. The other problem is most of the other auction sites are as much of a rip-off as eBay, both in the fees they charge and the stuff listed on them. Most of the other auction sites have junk that goes for above retail.... just like eBay.

craigslist is huge I don't know about other places but up here in canada there is kijiji which is basically a rip off of craigslist but still you can find tons of stuff on these types of sites, without having to deal with paypal.The part I like the best about a site like that is that you can view the item before buying it. Most of the time you meet up and pick up so can see the item and run away if you want. Cuts down on counterfits and scams. Typically you can't use credit cards but seriously it's where

I sort of enjoyed bidding for things on eBay back when it was new and there were deals to be had, but now nearly everything is at a fixed price and the only purpose it has for someone like me is to buy/sell used computer parts, which I can do elsewhere without the risk or hassle. I feel like the new eBay is mostly for soccer moms who don't know of alternatives, or for people who have very specialized interests with no other options (usually there are other, cheaper, safer options).

On the other hand, I never liked Paypal. As far as I could tell its sole purpose was to make it easier for sellers to scam buyers, since the only protection given to buyers is something on the order of $100. I know some people who bought Apple laptops on eBay, never received them, but were unable to get all of their ~$2000 back. If it happened to me, I'd do what another poster said today and stop the payment to Paypal from my credit card, but if it were me I wouldn't have made the purchase in the first place.

When you are looking for a fairly rare item and/or one that was never really sold in your country ebay has two big advantages1: ebay is massive, this means that the chance of someone on the system having the item is pretty damn high.2: ebay/paypal is pretty friendly to international transactions. I can use my british ebay/paypal account to bid on auctions anywhere in the world with no hassle (sometimes I do have to contact the seller to ask for postage rates but a lot of the time sellers post a list that co

is to buy/sell used computer parts, which I can do elsewhere without the risk or hassle.

You wouldn't happen to know of a site where I can do that from the UK?

In the last two months I have bought almost $200 worth of used computer parts off Ebay, none of them have worked as described and getting refunds and returns are proving such a massive headache that I'm thinking of giving up and swallowing the losses.

Needless to say, I have come to hate doing any business on Ebay/Paypal, and would love to have an alternative.

I'm lucky, I guess, in that I'm used to living in Silicon Valley, where Craigslist is larely populated with tech stuff.

I found out the hard way that when you "verify" your account, the bank account used to verify your PayPal account becomes the primary account. All payments you make through PayPal come out of it by default. I called them because all my purchases were coming out of my bank account and not my credit card. They said the bank account has to be the primary, and the only way to change it was to revert to "unverified," which I did. I like the protection I get from using a credit card. Payments extracted from a checking account has no where near the same protection.

Once you add bank to an existing account, it opts to directly withdraw from the bank rather than credit card, you CAN'T make the credit card default.In Australia, this means I get charged bank fees for using my regular bank account, (maximum 5 transactions a month free, than small but annoying fees)

The credit card obviously has no fees - they are happy with the interest you pay as a dipshit consumer in debt (which I'm not)

Paypal have done this so that people can't do ccard chargebacks as easily.

Huh. They let you set accounts back to Unverified once they've been verified?

I wonder how often they let you re-verify an account. Seeing as how they deposit several cents into your account totally free as part of the verification process... I smell an untapped profit opportunity!:)

Your account automatically goes back to unverified when you delete (from your PayPal account) the bank account it is tied to. They actually make two small deposits, but they take them back after you're verified. As least, they did with me.

You're probably right. I've had the account for years, but just verified is recently. Or, I could be mixing them up with another company. My online broker uses the same technique to verify. Maybe it was they that reclaimed the deposits.

Paypal claimed the seller had the money, and told the seller we (the buyer) had the money, and lied and stonewalled for months. Finally they just gave the money back without explanation after a state Attourney General inquired on our behalf.

The previous time I posted this on/., I was modded down as a liar. But unbelievable as the stody is, it is the truth.

In fairness to Paypal, our experience was shortly after it was purchased by EBay, so probably EBay cleaned it up some since then.

A mate of mine got scammed once. Bought a game console, seller claimed it was AU and came with 2 games, turned out to be a Jap one with no games. I did some digging, contacted the other buyers this seller had dealt with, and they all claimed exactly the same thing happened to them. I contacted ebay through my friend's account, they investigated and found the seller to be fraudulent and locked his account. However, the seller was long gone by that stage. The mobile # he was passing around was no longer v

From what I'm reading above, there is a major issue with dodgy sellers on Ebay. Paypal are just handling the payment and offer better safeguards than a transfer to a bank account. TFA is focusing on the fact it would cause a monopoly situation and the ACCC wants competition in the market.What actually needs to happen is the ability to have a "one click" report item as dodgy. Ebay gains too much from providing a lax vetting process to ever get serious about it.

I've been using Paypal since the very beginning. I've been using eBay and Yahoo Auctions since they were first established. I was thinking about how much $$$ I've spent on auction items over the years back when I last did my taxes. My purchases peaked in 2002 with just over $16k in purchase. In total I have bought nearly $100k of crap off of them both over the last decade. Amazingly enough I have never been burnt. All of my eBay purchases used PayPal I'm sorry to say. The only time I ever had a problem I simply did a chargeback with my CC. PP got pissed and threatened me; when I said I was going to do a chargeback they transferred me internally to a guy who did the threatening. He was obviously reading prepared material from a script. They never locked my account though. That was before you had to verify yourself to send $$$.

I moved back in 2003. That prompted me to move to a new bank as well. I was fortunate enough to have put my old bank account into Paypal when I verified my account. When I moved I sure as hell didn't update the info. It remained that way until this Spring when I accidentally forgot to change the payment method from PayPal's default of a bank account to a CC. They realized that my account was closed at that time and unverified my PP account. I had to give them my new bank account info. I hated to do it but I had to complete the purchase. I'm seriously considering signing up for a new account somewhere, using it for 6 months and then closing it just so I can get back to the way it was.

It's amazing that I've never actually gotten burnt considering how much I've used PP. The vast majority of the equipment I buy is networking gear. I'm pretty careful who I buy from. If I have any feeling that it's not a good seller I move on. I won't buy from anyone on the West coast (too much counterfeit Cisco hardware comes from China into the West coast). I'll even read all the seller's reviews and go back through their past auctions and the buyers to see if it looks legit. I guess being careful pays off. I'm definitely not a PP or eBay shill. I lost a fair bit of money in eBay stock and I think the wannabe bank PayPal should rot in litigation hell, but I never have been burnt.

I used to use eBay and Paypal quite a bit and for the most part I've had good experiences. For quite a while I kept a significant amount of money (nearly $10,000) in my Paypal money market account, earning a fairly decent interest rate (one of the higher rates I could find at the time). I was aware that Paypal was not FDIC insured but I was fairly confident that Paypal wouldn't collapse. I had one eBay purchase where Paypal backed me up and I got a refund (except for shipping). I really didn't have any serious complaints.

After hearing the news about eBay trying to force the use of Paypal, I had to rethink my position. I was concerned that such a decision would negatively impact their business and made me less secure in keeping my money there. More importantly, I felt I could no longer "invest" in the Paypal business model. Their interest rates had also been dropping so I started looking around at bank accounts. Surprisingly (or maybe not so, in hindsight) I found one that had a better interest rate and transferred my money. Paypal was more convenient and I'm sorry to miss out on that, but Paypal has lost my business (over $10,000 worth) and I'm not going back now.

Can someone suggest a good alternative to PayPal? eBay seems to have banned everything else that accepts credit cards and many buyers only want to pay by cc, even when you explicitly state that you don't take them. Basically it's impossible to sell anything on fleaBay without a PayPal account I think.

Maybe an alternative to eBay is needed. Amazon is okay for books and music, but what about other stuff? eBay actually seems like quite a good way to sell some stuff, if it just wasn't for PayPal.

Whilst I've been using PayPal for about 8 years now and find it's very useful for paying seller, one fact irks me somewhat, with a premier account they skim money off ALL transactions you receive even if the sender is using funds held in their PayPal account.

So basically they can charge a lot of money just to make one person's account balance go down and another go up - that's never happened when I've done a bank transfer within the UK.

If my personal experience is any indication, it's the process whereby upon reporting being victimised by an eBay "power seller" eBay threatens to find you guilty of being a "bad buyer" and threatens to place sanctions on your eBay and Paypal accounts unless you pay up. The workaround I found was to change all my eBay user info to the crooked seller's email address and a fictitious physical address and I canceled my paypal account.:P

It probably helped that I did this within an hour of eBay finding in favor of the dishonest seller (item was a Chinese counterfeit and did not function properly, also they attempted to charge for two items when I only bought one item). This was about three months ago, I've not heard anything about the matter since. Obviously, eBay lost me as a customer.